Re: Impossible device at work?
- From: "Greg Neill" <gneillREM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:39:04 -0400
"RXguy" <bel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1149766946.045675.172770@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi all,
I am a university student and get some extra private lessons to help me
out with my engineering course. My private teacher is himself a retired
university lecturer and likes to use experiments to demonstrate the
concepts under study.
However, last week's demonstration, after a lecture we did on
relativistic mass, this guy got one of his experimental setups as he
usually does, only that this time he said he would give us a month's
time to explain the effect ourselves, and did not give us a clue nor
claimed anything.
His setup simply consists of a small vertical cylinder 30cm in diameter
and about 20cm in height, smooth plastic exterior, with a solid plastic
shaft moulded to its vertical axis. The shaft is fixed to the cylinder,
so that if you turn the shaft, the cylinder will turn. The shaft
extends a further 20cm from above and below the cylindrical device and
is carefully gimballed so that the whole unit (shaft and cylinder) can
rotate freely about its vertical axis about two contact points at the
extreme ends of the shaft. Two wires, one from the upper shaft, one
from the lower connect to these gimball pivoting points, where they
connect to his power supply. We were invited to manually rotate this
cylinder by giving a gentle push tangentially to the cylinder. With his
supply in the off position, the cylinder rotated freely, as expected,
and it felt very light. When he powered up the device, we were again
invited to give another gentle push. And here is the unexpected effect:
the device was MUCH harder to turn, and came to a halt just after you
take off your hand, as if it was resisting any change in motion
"relative to its environment". The effect showed itself in whichever
direction of rotation one chose to rotate it. Whilst powered on, the
lecturer brought a magnetic compass and showed that no external
magnetic fields are present, near his device or at the pivoting
location. Indeed the compass confirmed what he stated.
Note that the device is not rotating relative to any external magnet or
electric field. The experiment was done on top of our lecture wooden
table, nothing underneath it, and around it we were just myself and a
couple of students. So, my question is, what could be going on in his
device. It simply doesn't make sense to me (and to the rest of my
friends) that such effect can happen and watching this device working
in front of our eyes is simply weird. Can anybody explain how one can
ever obtain such an effect, either mechanically or electrically, and
explain to me the physics behind it.
Thanks.
Could be the cylinder contains a horizontally mounted
gyroscope or two (their axes of rotation perpendicular
to the axis of rotation of the cylinder). Any rotation
of the cylinder would then involve rotating the plane
of rotation of the gyroscope(s). Being constrained by
the mounting shafts, any attempt to rotate the device
would result in a torque that would greatly increase the
friction on the bearings.
.
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